The present invention relates to diagnostics of structures, and more particularly to diagnostic network patch (DNP) systems for monitoring structural health conditions.
In general, structures in service may require periodic inspections and appropriate maintenance services to prolong their life and/or to prevent catastrophic failures. Numerous methods have been employed to identify fault or damage of structures, where these methods may include conventional visual inspection and non-destructive techniques, such as ultrasonic and eddy current scanning, acoustic emission and X-ray inspection. These conventional methods require at least temporary removal of structures from service for inspection. Although still used for inspection of isolated locations, they are time-consuming and expensive.
With the advance of sensor technologies, several diagnostic systems for in-situ structural integrity monitoring have been in progress. Typically, these diagnostic systems may utilize a number of sensory devices that are built in a host structure and operate as sensors and/or actuators. As the number of sensory devices in the host structure has increased, the complexity in networking the devices has also increased, and, as a consequence, the conventional network topology, such as matrix or multiplexer, may not be suitable for controlling the sensory devices. In some cases, inadequate network topology may limit the operational speed of the diagnostic systems. As such, there is a need for a new topology in network configuration that provides enhanced operational speed of the diagnostic systems and thereby increase the overall performance of the systems.